Galaxy NGC 3344 (Credit: NASA/ESA)
Albert Einstein’s name is synonymous with intelligence, but he’s more than earned his rep. The man revolutionized physics when he was in his 20s and 30s. He came up with a whole new way of understanding reality, not as a fixed grid against which events occur, but as fundamentally intertwined with time and perception. Trying to prove Einstein wrong, somehow, is a perennial goal of budding and experienced physicists al ...read more
Three reconstructed ancient genomes of Treponema pallidum, the corkscrew-shaped bacterium that causes syphilis, reveal new details of its evolution. (Credit: NIAID)
The bacterium Treponema pallidum is a nasty critter. It can lead to a number of conditions, collectively called treponemal diseases, that you definitely don’t want to have. They include syphilis, a typically sexually transmitted disease that still infects millions annually. The origins of the disease have lon ...read more
Koko playing with a kitten. (Credit: kokoflix/Youtube)
Koko, a gorilla who was instrumental in expanding our knowledge of the inner lives and abilities of primates, has died at the age of 46.
The western lowland gorilla was born at the San Francisco Zoo in 1971 on the Fourth of July — her given name was Hanabi-ko, Japanese for “fireworks child� — and was trained in sign language from a young age. Koko proved ...read more
I read once that if you want to keep a giraffe in captivity you have to capture it when it is young because an adult giraffe will fight to the death to be free.
Giraffes congregating in Kenya are caught on camera as part of Wildwatch Kenya’s citizen science project. Photo by Twiga Walinzi
The story was in the book “Zarafa� by Michael Allin, and while I don’t think the statement is scientifically correct, I have alway ...read more
This Bogong moth is ready for its close-up. (Credit: Ajay Narendra)
What if you had to find your way through hundreds of miles of unknown territory with only your eyes and a simple compass to guide you? That’s what the Australian Bogong moth does in its annual migration, flying over 600 miles (roughly 30 million times its body length) to seek a haven from summer heat in the cool caves of the Australian Alps.
An international team of researchers announced in the journal Curre ...read more
(Credit: s_bukley/Shutterstock)
In a Curb Your Enthusiasm episode from 2007, Larry David and his wife Cheryl and their friends attend a ceremony to celebrate his public donation to the National Resources Defense Council, a non-profit environmental advocacy group. Little does he know that the actor Ted Danson, his arch-frenemy, also donated money, but anonymously. “Now it looks like I just did mine for the credit as opposed to Mr. Wonderful Anonymous,â€&# ...read more
Daggers like Ötzi’s may have had symbolic significance during the Copper Age. (Credit: South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology)
Though he died 5300 years ago in the Alps near the Austrian-Italian border, the prehistoric man known as Ötzi the Iceman has had a remarkable afterlife in the sciences. His mummified body chiseled out of ice in 1991 has undergone extensive examination, revealing details about his life and times. The work has offered a glimpse i ...read more
(Credit: Stefan Holm/Shutterstock)
Even with a wetsuit, a cold water dive can be a bone-chilling experience. In Arctic waters, divers typically last only an hour, and even that short time can lead to numb, painful extremities.
But, by improving on a design already used in nature, researchers say that they’ve turned regular wetsuits into what they call “artificial blubber,� greatly increasing their performance with just a simple treatmen ...read more
